Photograph by: Arlen Redekop
, PNG

VANCOUVER — Jannik Hansen figures he has a head start. For about two or three games.

After spending much of the National Hockey League lockout playing in Finland, the Vancouver Canucks winger reunited with teammates skating at UBC on Tuesday.

The Dane had 17 points in 20 games for Tampere in the strong Finnish League and said he feels ready for the NHL season. But Hansen said the players who stayed in North America and trained in small groups the last four months will catch up in timing and conditioning within a week of the regular season starting on Jan. 19.

Only four Canucks — Hansen, Mason Raymond, Dale Weise and Cory Schneider — played games during the lockout, making NHL readiness an issue here.

“A couple of hundred guys (from the NHL) have been playing overseas, but the other 500 haven’t,” Hansen said. “So a lot of guys are at the same level. It will take only a couple of games and then guys will be where they need to be. Everybody’s in shape; guys haven’t been lying on the couch. Obviously, we need a couple of games to play the team together and get the systems down, but it’s the same guys coming back from previous years, so we should have an advantage.”

SEEMED FAIR TO FEHR: The Roberto Luongo Rule — or cap hit recapture system — penalizes teams when players signed to long-term contracts under the old Collective Bargaining Agreement retire before the expiration of their deals. Teams will be charged for the salary-cap savings they enjoyed by front-loading contracts.

The new clause satisfies NHL commissioner Gary Bettman’s desire to punish teams retroactively for contracts his office approved. But it also removes money from the salary-cap system. So why did union leader Donald Fehr and the players agree to it?

“We understand the impact it can have taking money out of the system,” Canuck Manny Malhotra, part of the NHLPA’s bargaining committee, said Tuesday. “Weighing the risk and reward, seeing how many guys it would affect, we didn’t feel it was overly unfair.”

But it’s a superfluous policing clause in the new CBA because, with new limits of contract lengths and year-to-year variance in salaries, front-loaded “lifetime” contracts will never again occur.

“It was really designed to affect contracts retroactively,” Malhotra conceded.

THE LAKE EFFECT: It felt like winter inside and outside Thunderbird Arena, but it was balmy for Canucks defenceman Dan Hamhuis.

Hamhuis spent the holidays skating on an outdoor rink he built for his family at their off-season home on Tyhee Lake, near Smithers.

“A couple of nights we were out there under the full moon,” he said. “One night I went out for a quick skate, just to work on a few things. Another night my wife and I went out there for a skate. With a clear sky and full moon on the snow, it’s so bright it’s amazing. But it was cold — minus-15 or minus-16.”

Hamhuis and his wife Sarah have three daughters under the age of five. The Canuck said he enjoyed unlimited ice time. He borrowed his dad’s snowblower to clear a rink on the lake.

“It was kind of fun to work on some stickhandling stuff without paying $150 an hour for ice,” Hamhuis smiled. “It was like being a kid again.”

MIDDLE CHILD: While Canucks general manager Mike Gillis works on acquiring a centre to fill the significant lineup gaps created by Samuel Pahlsson’s departure and Ryan Kesler’s injury, Vancouver winger Chris Higgins is ready to move to the middle if asked.

“I played a lot (at centre) in Montreal,” the former Canadien said. “I was back and forth between centre and wing. I’m comfortable at centre, but obviously I’d rather play wing. With a little practise, I can make the transition.”

The Canucks should try to keep Higgins on the wing, where he had 18 goals and 43 points last season and can best use his acceleration to force turnovers and win pucks.

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